I always feel bereft when the football season ends. The hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach duly arrived on the final whistle of the Brazil-Paraguay World Cup qualifier in the early hours of Thursday morning, when I realised it was all over until the West Ham-Spurs pre-season friendly in Beijing on 29 July. It is especially difficult in years like this, ending in odd numbers, meaning no World Cup, no European Championship.

I calculate it will be at least 10 weeks before I can hear Alan Green again complaining about a referee or the fact the M6 was not cleared for him to get to his match. Missing him already.

Sure, the summer brings distractions: Super League, Wimbledon, the Lions against the Springboks, the Chuckle Brothers in summer season in Skegness (40 years, one catchphrase, genius), and, most of all, the Ashes. I just wish I could summon up the enthusiasm for cricket that I have for football.

I put it down to an accident of birth. I came of age in a pretty barren era for the summer game, in the 60s before the one-day version re-energised the sport. My father had no great enthusiasm for cricket either, but dutifully took me to a Test match at Old Trafford, where I seem to remember Ken Barrington batting all day for not many runs, as a result of which the sound of leather against willow failed to enter my personal pantheon, and I rarely troubled the sellers of linseed oil.

It is a shame because cricket appears to be a far more interesting sport than football if the terrific BBC2 series Empire of Cricketis to be believed. Last night's episode was about Australia, and it confirmed my feeling about the era of cricket in which I grew up. The innate conservatism of Australian society in the 50s and early 60s, argued the programme, was reflected in a staid, restricted style of cricket.

I guess there was a whiff of post-war austerity about our cricket, too. They felt it more in Australia, though, with the Conservatives in power there from 1949 to 1972, an era marked by undue deference to the Crown. There were some great pictures of long-serving prime minister Robert Menzies forelock-tugging like mad when our sparkling new Queen visited Australia at his invitation in 1954.

I am a sucker for any programme replete with archive, and last night's show boasted film archaeology of a high order. I especially enjoyed the 70s' stuff. It might be my imagination, and I do not wish to be indelicate, but did women have smaller, pointier breasts in the 70s? It certainly looked that way. This may have something to do with brassiere technology, or the design of sweaters, or possibly the footage was shot by Australian news cameramen with a specific interest in that area – what you might call the larrikin school of film-making.

Larrikin was a word that cropped up frequently with reference to the revival of swashbuckling, devil-may-care cricket from the Australians in the 70s, which the programme tied to the burgeoning international fame of "typical Aussie larrikin" Paul Hogan and the election of Gough Whitlam, which ushered in a new national pride and assertiveness. A good example of this new assertiveness/bolshiness was provided by Ian Chappell, who captained the Aussies in the 1972 Ashes series in England.

"Just before the first Test, a British tabloid printed the headline, 'Aussies take it lying down'," Chappell said, "so our manager, Ray Steele, a competitive kind of guy, reads out this headline, thumps the paper down on the table, and says, 'Pig's bloody arse they do'," – the kind of forthright statement of intent you could never imagine Menzies, for example, vouchsafing to Her Majesty.

Fast bowlers Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson were competitive kind of guys, too, and while Chappell intimidated England's bowlers with his hook shot, they struck terror into our batsman. "At the Sydney Cricket Ground in the 74–75 series, there was a banner reading, 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if Lillee don't get you, Thommo must'," Chappell recalled. The fans who flocked to that series were described as "fellow larrikins, well acquainted with Mr Booze".

A still youthful Thommo, bleached blond now and looking like the lost member of Status Quo, described the unique bond between team and followers who arrived tooled up with "giant Eskies full of beer".

The players were no strangers to Mr B, either. As Thommo seamlessly ushered in the next era in Aussie cricket, the Kerry Packer World Series, he described the growing feeling of discontent that gave Packer his opportunity. Stadiums, he said, were packed, and yet the players were paid just A$200 a Test match. "Mate, we used to drink that in the first night," said Thommo.